AFGHANISTAN (2001-21)
What triggered the US involvement:
On Oct. 7, 2001, weeks after the al Qaeda attacked the US on Sept. 11, President George W. Bush announced that air strikes on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan had begun. The air strikes continued for five days. Bush warned that Operation Enduring Freedom would entail “a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen”.
“The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilised world,” Bush said on Oct. 11, 2001. “And the world has come together to fight a new and different war, the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those that shelter them.”
After routing the Taliban, the US and Nato turned to rebuilding the country, spending billions trying to reconstruct a nation already ravaged by two decades of war. But with corruption rampant, hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction money was misappropriated.
In May 2011, a US Navy SEAL team killed Osama Bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In June, Obama announced that he would start bringing American forces home and hand over security duties to the Afghans by 2014. Obama ended major combat operations on Dec. 31, 2014.
Nearly three years later, President Donald J. Trump said that although his first instinct had been to withdraw all troops, he stressed that any troop withdrawal would be based on combat conditions, not predetermined timelines. Circumstances leading to or surrounding withdrawal: The US spent $4 billion a year on the Afghan military, but military and police units in Afghanistan were riven by desertions, low recruitment rates and low morale. An intelligence assessment presented to the Biden administration said Afghanistan could fall under Taliban control within two to three years after the departure of international forces. However, Taliban moved into Kabul on Aug. 15.
Final withdrawal: Aug. 31, 2021 (US troops withdrew on Aug. 30 after 7,262 days).